Turn 106 of 233

Tell the crew about the pregnancy. Call Janet with the due date. Go to Gainesville to meet Sina. She is a female version of Aleki. Just at 6'4" instead of 6'6"

The crew is eating lunch when Lena tells them. She's sitting on the stack of plywood — the spot she's claimed since the first house, the spot where the crew gathers and the conversation is easy and the food goes down fast. Marco has the cooler open. Daryl is working through a sub sandwich. Walt is leaning against the forklift with a Gatorade. The others are scattered — Frank on the sawhorses, Ray on the concrete blocks, Tuki cross-legged on the slab. Lena sets down the container of rice and chicken she's been eating with her hands and the grease is on her fingers and the tribal ink is dark on her forearms and she says it the way she says everything on site. Direct. Structural.

"I'm pregnant. Eight weeks. Keeping it. Due in January."

The crew goes quiet. Not the shocked quiet of the office — the processing quiet of men who work with their hands and understand that things change and you adjust the plan. Walt looks at her and his face does the thing it does when he's rechecking a measurement — steady, careful, the eyes moving across the whole picture. Marco closes the cooler. Daryl sets down the sub.

"The father?" Walt says.

"Dead. Port accident. Last Thursday."

Walt nods. The nod is slow and heavy and it carries the weight of a man who has worked construction for twenty years and knows what it means when someone doesn't come home. He doesn't say he's sorry. He says: "You know the schedule. We'll adjust."

Marco reaches across and puts a hand on her shoulder — the tattooed shoulder, the tribal ink under his fingers — and squeezes once and lets go. That's it. The crew goes back to eating. The conversation shifts to the inspector on Thursday and the framing schedule for the west wall and the load calculation on the second-floor joists and Lena picks up the rice and chicken and the lunch continues and nothing is different and everything is different.

That evening she calls Janet from the balcony. The fan turns above her and the city is orange and the ultrasound is folded in the truck and she gives Janet the date Dr. Parekh calculated — January 14th — and Janet writes it down. Janet doesn't cry. Janet asks about the doctor and Lena tells her about Dr. Parekh and the clinic on Fourth Street and the monitoring and the risk profile and Janet listens and the listening is the kind of listening that means she is writing everything down in the notebook she keeps by the phone.

"Thank you for telling me," Janet says, and the words are simple and heavy and Lena hangs up and the call is done.

Saturday morning she drives to Gainesville. Two hours north on the highway, the truck eating the miles, the windows down, the Florida air thick and warm. She drives past the exit for the site and past the donut shop and past the city limits and the landscape flattens into farmland and pine and the sky gets wider. She doesn't turn on the radio. The silence is the right shape. The ultrasound is folded in the visor pocket.

Sina's bungalow is small and white with a chain-link fence and a yard full of toys and a mango tree in the front. Lena parks the truck on the street and the suspension lifts when she steps out and the neighborhood is quiet — a Saturday morning, the smell of cut grass, a dog barking somewhere. She walks to the gate barefoot on the hot sidewalk and the tribal ink is dark on her calves and the grime is in every crease and she is five hundred twenty-five pounds of tattooed and grimy and pregnant and she opens the gate and walks to the door.

Sina opens it and the breath catches in Lena's chest. She is Aleki. Not exactly — an inch and a half shorter, six-four instead of six-six, the build slightly different, the shoulders a fraction narrower — but the face is his face. The same deep-set eyes. The same wide jaw. The same skin, the same brown, the same way of standing with the weight settled low and the hands open. She is wearing a loose shirt and cotton pants and her feet are bare on the tile and her hair is pulled back and she is big — not Lena-big, not five hundred pounds, but big the way Aleki was big, the kind of big that fills a doorframe and makes the floor aware of itself.

"You're Lena," Sina says. Not a question.

"Yeah."

Sina looks at her. The eyes move the way Aleki's eyes moved that first night at Murph's — taking the whole picture, the scale, the tattoos, the belly, the bare feet, the grime, the size. Then Sina steps back from the door and the gesture is the same gesture Aleki made on the balcony — the wordless invitation, the body making room.

"Come in. Bring the picture."

Lena steps into the bungalow and the floor is tile and cool under her callused feet and the living room is small and full of the evidence of children — a stack of school books, a toy truck, a jacket on the couch, a family photo on the wall. The photo has Aleki in it. He is standing behind Sina with his hands on her shoulders and the children are in front and he is grinning and the grin is the grin Lena saw on the balcony and never saw again. She stops in front of the photo and Sina watches her look at it and neither of them speaks. Lena pulls the ultrasound from the visor pocket — folded once, the paper thin and warm from the truck — and unfolds it and holds it out. Sina takes it with both hands. Her fingers are thick and dark and steady. She looks at the image — the grainy shape, the small curl, the pulse that the machine caught and the paper preserved — and her face does the thing that Aleki's face did when he was processing something he didn't have words for. The jaw works. The eyes stay wet. The hands don't move.

"That's his," Sina says. Her voice is Aleki's voice pitched slightly higher. The vowels are the same. The cadence is the same. The weight in the words is the same.

"Yeah."

Sina holds the ultrasound and doesn't give it back. Lena doesn't ask for it. The mango tree outside the window throws shadows across the tile and the fan turns and the children's toys are on the floor and the photo of Aleki is on the wall and the baby is eight weeks old and growing inside a body that is five hundred twenty-five pounds and tattooed and grimy and barefoot and the body is hers and the body is his and the body is theirs and Sina is standing in the living room holding the proof.